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P&J Oyster Co., a 134-year-old oyster house in New Orleans, is the latest victim of the Gulf oil spill. Barring an unforeseen reopening of the oyster beds that supply the business, Thursday was the last day of shucking.
P&J Oysters, the nation’s oldest continually operating dealer of oysters, is no longer shucking Gulf Coast oysters after the oil spill tainted too many of their suppliers’ beds. The fact that this is New Orleans seafood week adds an unbearably ironic twist to the shuttering of a family business and local institution.
In the mid 1800′s, John Popich’s family immigrated from a Mediterranean fishing community to the Gulf of Mexico and over the last 134 years his family became a leader in the oyster industry, advocating for Gulf seafood.
This spring I heard P&J’s Sal Sunseri speak at the “Shucking and Jiving with Oysters” panel during “The Tennessee Williams Festival Celebrates the Best of the Bivalves,” and he was an enthusiastic evangelist for the quality of fresh Gulf Coast oysters.
If anyplace can serve as an instant gauge of how the oil spill has altered Louisiana’s seafood industry, it is New Orleans, where servers shuck oysters by hand, gloveless and confident.
Restaurants in the French Quarter brag about serving homegrown Louisiana seafood, which makes up about 30 percent of the U.S. domestic product, and so there is no question that the loss of the normal supply of shrimp, blue crabs and oysters is being felt here first. But unlike cities that are advertising nongulf seafood, New Orleans is not abandoning local catch; it’s embracing what remains.
Prices may rise and menus may change before the final toll of the spill is known, but chefs here say that as long as part of the Louisiana coastline remains open, they will tap into their culinary creativity before turning to imported catch.
On the surface, all seemed right with the world at the Louisiana Seafood Festival, with the aroma of grilled shrimp mingling with live Cajun Zydeco music and sweltering heat on the edge of the French Quarter.
But the intoxicating smells and sounds that exemplify New Orleans only partly masked an underlying fear among restaurateurs promoting their dishes that the oil spill fouling the Gulf of Mexico will harm their business for years.
“We made some boiled shrimp sausages — that’s one of our signature sausages — and nobody’s buying it,” Michael Cusimano, of Two Guys Sausage, said as he flipped a line of them on a grill behind his tent on Saturday.
Local fishermen are concerned about yet another fishing ban putting pressure on an already stressed industry. The ban on red snapper has businesses wondering if they’ll be able to stay afloat.
Not only was the ban on red snapper extended indefinitely, but a new area was shut down to all species of snapper and grouper. A 5,000 square mile zone off of Georgia and Florida will be shut down to the nearly 70 species of snapper and grouper most popular among fishermen. This means fishermen from Florida will send their boats north to our waters to stay in business, putting more pressure on our fish and giving our fishermen more competition as well.
U.S. catfish farmers predict a regulation requiring the inspection of imported catfish may soon be passed, according to NPR.
Although the U.S. Department of Agriculture was mandated to begin inspecting imported catfish under the 2008 farm bill, the regulation has not yet been implemented. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., chairman of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry, has been spearheading the effort to pressure the USDA to issue the enforcement ruling. Catfish farmers expect Lincoln’s victory in the primary’s this week to help get the inspection regulation passed.
“She’s overcome a big hurdle here,” said Joey Lowery, president of the Catfish Farmers of America, to NPR. “We anticipate the rule will come out shortly,” he said.
Sponsors of the Raritan Bay oyster restoration project say they are proceeding with their summer monitoring work, until they get a directive from the state Department of Environmental Protection that could force abandonment of the project that has planted 500,000 oysters off Keyport.
“They issued the press release, but nothing formal,” said Meredith Comi, director of the NY/NJ Baykeeper oyster program.
Meanwhile, Baykeeper supporters and their allies are still protesting the announcement Monday by DEP Commissioner Bob Martin that oyster restoration in restricted shellfish waters will be halted to protect public health.
Behind the decision is a long-simmering concern over the adequacy of the DEP’s marine patrols and shellfish enforcement program, which makes certain that clams, oysters and mussels are not harvested from waters with high levels of bacteria. The agency has been under pressure from the federal Food and Drug Administration, which oversees shellfish safety and has questioned whether New Jersey provides adequate security for shellfish beds.
Scallop season in Port St. Joe means hundreds of daily visitors pouring into the city.
“It’s more than gathering scallops. It’s a recreational activity for the whole family,” Port St. Joe Mayor Mel Magidson said.
Magidson and Gulf County officials were pleased to hear Friday that Gov. Charlie Crist announced an early start to the region’s 2010 recreational harvest season for bay scallops, after listening to pleas from the region’s businesses and community leaders.
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) order places the recreational scallop season start date at June 19 instead of July 1 for scalloping areas from the west bank of the Mexico Beach Canal in Bay County to the Pasco-Hernando county line near Aripeka. All other provisions governing the harvest of bay scallops will remain in effect for the duration of the order.
The Unified Command in New Bedford was surveying 504,000 pounds of clams for traces of mustard gas Saturday, at the Sea Watch International seafood processing facility in New Bedford where the catch had been isolated since Monday.
The clams were dredged Sunday, by the fishing vessel ESS Pursuit along with eight canisters containing sulfur mustard, about 45 miles south of Fire Island, N.Y.
One crewman had to be hospitalized Monday with blisters from mustard gas exposure.
Officials believed it was highly unlikely that the clam catch contained any traces of mustard gas, but they were continuing to treat them as hazardous waste as a precaution.
With oil working its way into the wetlands of Louisiana and washing up on beaches there and in Alabama, Mississippi and Florida, the picture is bleak at worst, uncertain at best.
“We thought we fixed everything from five years ago (Hurricane Katrina), but now we’re in a new oily boat,” said Poppy Tooker, a New Orleans author, culinary activist, radio host — and outdoorswoman. She also teaches at the New Orleans Cooking Experience, a vacation cooking school. Shrimp creole, anyone?
She said the school is seeing some cancellations because people hear — incorrectly — that there is no seafood available.
Now, some shrimpers are getting hit with fines and possible jail time when they’re caught fishing in closed areas.
In May alone, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries issued 117 tickets to fishermen. A ticket is a Class 2 violation that comes with a fine of between $150 and $300 and/or 60 days in jail.
One dock owner said it’s not fair because the shrimp grounds around Iberia and Vermilion parishes have been closed and re-opened many times in the past month.
Fabian Seafood made its regular haul to Rochester last week. Hauling a 32,000-pound, refrigerated truck, it set up in the parking lot of the Muffler Center in southwest Rochester and began selling shrimp and other seafood caught straight from the Gulf of Mexico.
The seafood sold fast, almost as if it were going out of style, especially the shrimp, says Steve Fabian, who regularly makes the nearly 1,300-mile trip from Galveston, Texas, to Rochester.
Normally, Fabian sells about 600 pounds of shrimp during its stopover in Rochester, but this time it sold close to 900 pounds, even though the per-pound price for shrimp was 60 cents higher.
U.S. shrimpers who comb seas unaffected by the oil-slickened Gulf are raising prices as demand for their catch rises, bringing a potential — but bittersweet — respite from some tough years.
“We are getting calls from buyers who haven’t bought from us in awhile and who are offering more money,” said Rutledge Leland, owner of Carolina Seafood in McClellanville, S.C.
Fishermen in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Texas, whose waters have not been affected by oil, say prices for their shrimp have gone up as processing plants that normally buy Gulf seafood turn to other docks for their supply.
Leland, who is also the mayor of the small fishing town, said the price for frozen shrimp has increased about 30 percent in the last couple of months, a jump he said was aided by the April 20 Gulf spill that has closed about a third of federal waters in the Gulf to fishing boats for fear of contaminated seafood.
The Viet Nam Association of Seafood Exporters and Producers (VASEP) is in the process of identifying key tasks to help its members increase their competitiveness in local and international markets for the 2010-15 period.
Speaking at the association’s 4th Congress yesterday in HCM City, Nguyen Thi Thu Sac, deputy head of VASEP, said that strict international standards required an improvement in quality of seafood exports.
The association is helping seafood companies in a variety of ways, including giving assistance in the use of data-capture technologies like linear barcodes, 2-D barcodes and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), which help to guarantee the quality of seafood.
In addition, it informs farmers of export trade barriers and the strict requirements of world markets.
In collaboration with the Shrimp Committee and the provincial People’s Committees, VASEP has also encouraged farmers to stop injecting impure substances into their shrimp in an aim to improve quality.
“The quality of the seafood, obviously the prices are going to go up, and there’s going to be a shortage so yeah serious concerns,” consumer Bob Dominick said.
But for local businesses that rely on seafood, the oil spill could have a huge impact.
“It’s heartbreaking, it is heartbreaking what is happening in that area of the country and its going to affect all of us, the whole world,” Ocean Stars restaurant owner Victoria Angelis said.
Angelis said the price of shrimp has already gone up as much as a $1.50 per pound.
As BP races to stop the massive oil spill spreading rapidly in the Gulf, local seafood restaurants are starting to feel the pinch.
“I stocked up as soon as it happened and so I was ok for awhile,” said Jenny Polvere, owner of Skinnyz Bar and Grill in Matthews, NC.
But her supply of oysters has steadily dwindled. “I’m looking at oysters to be pretty skimpy coming up soon,” said Polvere. “We’ll probably have to 86 those for awhile.”
And there’s more bad news: Polvere can’t even offer her signature blue crab claws — the delicacy she says folks come from miles around for.
Georgia Voyiatais is the owner of Coral Seafood in Worcester. She is keeping a close eye on the oil spill in the Gulf because she says she has already felt the effects.
With global demand for seafood expected to jump 90 percent over the next 20 years, safe, responsible aquaculture will be essential to ensuring the sustainability of the world’s oceans. As a leader in food safety, seafood sustainability and the use of sustainable aquaculture, Darden Restaurants applauds the recent announcement that the Global Aquaculture Alliance (GAA) Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) certification program has been successfully benchmarked against and accepted by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).
GFSI documents provide an internationally recognized benchmark against which any food or farm assurance standard can be measured. Representing a collaboration of leading experts from retail, manufacturing and foodservice companies, GFSI pursues continuous improvement in food safety management and cost efficiency in the supply chain.
“The GFSI benchmarking is the highest validation of the Best Aquaculture Practices certification program,” said Bill Herzig, senior vice president of Purchasing and Supply Chain Innovation for Darden. “Seafood from BAP-certified sources meets the most stringent standards for food safety, which is a critical component of our overall sustainability efforts.
“Darden was the first U.S. restaurant company to require its farmed shrimp suppliers to adopt BAP standards and the GFSI benchmarking takes on added importance as BAP expands to include other species such as tilapia and catfish.”
The food safety elements of the BAP program comply with the guidelines established by GFSI based on industry best practices and sound science. The BAP certification program also goes beyond food safety to address traceability, animal welfare, environmental sustainability and social responsibility in additional certification standards.
A proposed ban on lobstering off Southern New England would have no impact on most Connecticut lobstermen because they’re already out of business.
The 20-odd lobstermen still at it would have to do something else for the five years a technical team wants to stop trapping lobsters.
Nick Crismale, of the Connecticut Lobstermen Association, has already switched to clamming. He says he’s suspicious of the motivation for the ban.
“Up in Maine, they had their largest catch ever and they can’t sell the lobsters, so take 10 million lobsters out of the supply, and they can move their lobsters,” he said.
About 20 restaurant owners who said seafood prices have soared since the Deepwater Horizon disaster gathered downtown Thursday to hear about their legal options.
Owners of restaurants big and small met at Sky Bar Steak and Sushi on Postoffice Street to hear what prominent attorney Tony Buzbee had to say.
The restaurant owners gathered Thursday represented upscale establishments such as Rudy & Paco in Galveston’s downtown, casual eateries such as Taco House on Broadway and every type in between.
Although no oil has reached Texas shores, those who make a living selling seafood on the island said they’re feeling the effects through rising seafood prices.
